The Things We Don’t Say

by Ella Carey

  “Rupert?” she whispered. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Hello, my dear,” he said.

  Laura pulled open the curtains, suddenly desperate for light.

  Ewan stepped out of his chair and offered it to Clover. Laura sat next to her mother now, while, tentatively, Clover reached out and stroked Emma’s still hand. Laura winced at the awkwardness between them, her mother and Em. And yet, there was a slight murmur of movement in Em’s fingers at the feel of her daughter’s last touch on the hands that had painted such treasures to leave behind in the world.

  When the nurse came in, she asked that same question that she’d asked Laura only a few hours ago, and they all looked at each other, this odd little family of sorts—the extension of the Circle that was Laura, Clover, and Rupert. What was left. And they all agreed it was time. Time to turn off Emma’s life support. Everything that had needed to be expressed in one beautiful life was done.

  In one roundabout way or another, Emma had finally sent her message of tolerance, peace, and love to everyone she’d known and to people she’d never met, whether through art, words, or love, no matter how human she was, no matter that she’d loved, sometimes painfully, and had been loved, sometimes imperfectly, in return.

  It was time now; the Circle had made its full round.

  Laura stroked Emma’s head.

  “Goodbye, Gran,” she whispered. “Goodbye our darling Em.”

  Laura held the door open for Ewan and Jasper to make their way into the bank. Ewan held the real portrait of Emma, while Jasper carried the copy. They both stood in the entrance hall, hovering while Laura closed the glass door with a soft, final thud. She managed to smile at both of them.

  “Okay?” Ewan asked.

  “Yes.” She nodded. Em would never want her to collapse. “I am.”

  As Ivan invited them into his office, Laura felt the hint of a smile pass across her face at the sight of the odd yet strong group that was gathered today.

  Clover, Rupert, and Rosie Buchanan were already seated in a half circle around a small table in the middle of the room. It was Clover whom they’d agreed would talk to Ivan, telling the story of a painting that was inextricably linked with all these lives.

  Once Clover was done, her story clear and dignified, Ivan regarded the circle of friends—almost a family of sorts, was that what they were? Through a century of turbulence, through two world wars and a gentle social revolution carried out by the extraordinary Emma Temple, this group of people had delved into past passion—of both the destructive and beautiful sort—into secrets that had been held close to private hearts, and into worlds that had circled around, linked because they were polar opposites and yet also because nothing existed as an entirely separate entity from anything else.

  Ivan was quiet for a moment before he laid his glasses down on the table. “Well, I am relieved to tell you all that Laura can have her music back.”

  Relief washed over Laura at the sound of the words she’d so longed to hear. She caught her mother’s eye. Clover’s face was clearer than Laura had ever seen it in her life.

  Summerfield, 1980

  Two days later, on a hot day in Sussex, the same little group hung the portrait back over Emma’s bed at Summerfield, only this time, they were open about the fact that it was Hamish Buchanan’s soaring copy of Patrick’s work that would delight anyone who cared to come into Emma’s room. The fact that the Tate was holding Patrick’s original for possible acquisition after the exhibition of gay artists in the early twentieth century was something that sat well with Laura. It turned out that Laura’s loan could have been worth ten times what she’d borrowed, and once the Tate had acquired the painting, there would be more than enough to put toward the proposed Emma Temple and Patrick Adams Trust to turn Summerfield into a museum in memory of the Circle and all their lives’ work.

  They made their way out into the garden. Laura sat between Jasper and Ewan, those two men whom she knew would always be so very dear to her. Somehow, they’d helped her form a complete little triangle, which, perhaps, was the most stable shape after all.

  As the guests settled quietly in the rows behind them, an old man stood at the podium. He peered out at the crowd gathered on the lawn to say goodbye to Em. Laura turned a moment. White funeral programs fluttered in front of hot faces, and people’s legs stuck to the white plastic seats that had been set up in the heat. If Emma were here today, Laura knew those utilitarian, unornamented chairs would never have been allowed through the front gate.

  “Very few of us can leave this life without suffering any regrets, but I believe that Emma Temple can rest without any misgivings.” The old man smiled as if he’d reached a conclusion of sorts. Perhaps it was because he was the last person anyone would have expected to see here, let alone speak.

  Butterflies fluttered in the shady nooks at Summerfield, where the grass had been allowed to grow wild and long, its graceful stems wafting as if in accompaniment to Em’s funeral by the lake.

  Two empty wooden chairs sat on the stage next to the man who spoke.

  Jerome leaned as if for support on the chair closest to him while he spoke, his hand resting on the decorations that Emma had wrought along its back. Her particular painted circles were rendered in pale greens and terracotta, from paint that had been mixed with alabaster chalk from the soil here in Sussex. Glorious athletic male figures languished across the back of the second empty chair—Patrick’s work.

  Emma’s and Patrick’s art would outlive them both; perhaps the beauty of their work would speak to future generations, to those souls who would take the time to discover Emma’s story, a story that was not only unique but one that would always be intertwined with Patrick’s, no matter that some line of convention should have kept them apart.

  A breeze riffled across the surface of the pond. Laura looked at the water, wondering whether Emma and Patrick were, in some way, aware of what was going on at Summerfield today.

  The entire house and garden might be a testimony to a world that was long gone now, even though the inhabitants were both a product of and a rebellion against their time. Their spirits still seemed to whisper around every room and linger out here in the garden.

  But just because people had gone, it didn’t mean they didn’t have anything left to say.

  Jerome cleared his throat. Laura glanced up at him, her nerves pirouetting below her ribs.

  “Progressive in her approach to both art and life, Emma Temple forged new ideas about personal freedom, love, and what makes a family—issues that we still grapple with today.”

  Laura’s gaze was fixed on her grandmother’s coffin. Roses in an array of sunny morning yellows and sunset-infused pinks were arranged on the closed lid. Color was both her fascination and her gift.

  “Much has been written about Emma Temple as a woman and as a mother but not as an artist.”

  Laura looked up at the sound of the second voice. The smaller, lighter man appeared like some second player on a stage. Rupert and Jerome might have hovered around the edges of the Circle, but they had outlived everyone else.

  “We must remember that Emma was a bold, modern innovator in her own right, a woman who practiced her craft every day, a dedicated practitioner with a strong vision who was not afraid to strike out and take a risk. Her sixty-year relationship with the equally gifted artist Patrick Adams had this same distinct trait, and that thread is what made their relationship one of the most remarkable in the art world in the twentieth century.”

  Ewan reached out. Laura placed her hand in his, and he held it fast between them.

  “Yes, she was unconventional; yes, she suffered because she and her extraordinary family lived well outside society’s rules, but Summerfield and all the work both Patrick and Emma have left for us are a testimony to a bold, innovative modern couple, who viewed their family and their home not as a place of restriction but as a vehicle for personal freedom for all,” Rupert exclaimed.

  “Well said,
” someone murmured a little farther down Laura’s row.

  “The only way the artists in the Circle could cope with the wars that blighted this century was to refuse their involvement and simply to paint. They were pacifists,” Jerome finished.

  He removed his reading glasses and looked over the guests. Laura reached up and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. The more the Circle were ostracized by society during both world wars, the more Emma retreated, and the closer she drew her loved ones around her, the more she supported them and loved them no matter what.

  Rupert made his slow way to the record player that Patrick and Emma used to keep in their studio, the glorious light-filled space at the back of the farmhouse with its vaulted glass ceilings and all-day steady southern light. He lowered the needle onto the black LP before making his solitary way to one of the two empty chairs. The chair he chose was the one Emma had painted, which was telling in itself.

  Bach’s Double Violin Concerto soared around the garden, the two violins calling to each other like a pair of birds in simultaneous flight, one winging ahead for a moment while the other supported it until, in a glorious switchback, they would swap so that the other one led for a while, until the pair of them would come together in unison as if in a perfect partnership.

  The old record player brought to mind Patrick and the jokes he used to play when Laura was young. He loved tricks . . . but Emma’s deep love for Patrick, alongside his enduring love for her, like Bach’s music, would always live on.

  The Royal College of Music, 1980

  Laura glanced down at the small audience that sat in the concert hall—three examiners, her teacher, and, up at the back of the room, there was Ewan. She caught his eye, and he blew her a silent kiss. She’d made it through the Bartók, weaving her way among the challenging jumps, her hands playing multiple tricks between bows and pizzicato alike. And now, she paused a moment.

  As Laura raised her bow to the Guadagnini to play the glorious Bach Double, a sudden strong yellow light beamed in through the tall windows, shining and spreading all through the concert hall. The light dazzled on Laura’s face just for one moment before glinting on the cherry-colored wood of her adored violin. As she turned to Jasper, they smiled at each other, and she was grateful he could play the violin as well as the viola because right now—after everything that had happened—he was the only person she wanted next to her on this stage while she played this exquisite piece. If Emma’s portrait captured Patrick’s feelings toward her, then Bach’s Double Violin Concerto was a pure expression of the way Laura felt toward them both—her inspiration whom she would never, ever forget. She and Jasper began, in unison, to play the timeless music together that was, in the end, divine.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Novels are a collaborative effort. For me, there is an inspiring and wonderful blend of people from the past and the present without whom this story could not exist. While this story is entirely fictional, I have long been intrigued by the artist Vanessa Bell and her beautiful relationship with her fellow artist Duncan Grant. One of the most profoundly moving experiences I had while researching this book was standing at Vanessa Bell’s and Duncan Grant’s simple gravestones, which lie together in a small village cemetery in Sussex, not far from Charleston—the old farmhouse where they lived and created art and a beautiful life inspired by tolerance and acceptance during all the upheavals of the twentieth century. No less moving was walking in Vanessa Bell’s and Virginia Woolf’s footsteps in Gordon Square, seeing university students studying in the living room of Vanessa’s house in Bloomsbury, and standing at the site of the real Omega Workshops where Roger Fry set up a collaborative workshop for London artists in the early part of the twentieth century.

  If writing is a means of making sense of the world, then Bloomsbury is a beautiful world to make sense of, and without my editor, Jodi Warshaw, this book would never have been written. I have incredibly good fortune to work with Jodi, and I thank her sincerely for her professionalism; for her steady, lovely nature; and for her thoughtful, knowledgeable approach. I adore working with her. Huge thanks to my structural editor, Tegan Tigani, for her wonderful work, her dedicated and detailed approach, and for her sense of humor! I am so fortunate to have her edit my books, and I am grateful to her. Tegan was in London during the editing process of this book and sent me her own photos of the house that had inspired Laura’s basement flat, which I had spotted on my own research trip and will share with my readers on my website and social media pages in time.

  Thank you to the entire team at Lake Union Publishing, to Cheri Madison for her wonderful copyediting, to Stacy Abrams for proofreading this book, to Nicole Pomeroy once again for project managing the editorial process, to Devan Hanna for her marketing of my books, to Alex Levenberg for her support with selling foreign rights to my books, and to my lovely Gabriella Dumpit, my author relations manager, without whom I would so often be lost!

  I would like to thank my agent, Steven Salpeter, at Curtis Brown for his amazing support and careful management of my career. Thank you to my screenplay agent, Peter Giagni, and to Tracy Balsz in LA, and to Nas Dean. To my readers, especially those with whom I interact on my social media pages, and to Helen Sibritt in particular and the others who cheer me along most days, thank you—I appreciate you.

  In London, I would like to acknowledge and thank Hadley Stirrup, whose knowledge of Bloomsbury is extraordinary. Thank you for your time. In Australia, thank you to Writer’s Victoria, in particular Kate Larsen. Thank you to the Melbourne Writer’s Festival and especially Gabrielle Ryan. To the Historical Novelists Society of Australasia, in particular Chris Foley and Elisabeth Storrs, my thanks for your support. Thank you to my own lovely writers’ group of friends, in particular, Geoff Stuart, Stella Makrigiannis, Ros Lewis, and James Jensen. To all my friends, thank you for your support, in particular, always, to Kelli Jones, Fiona Calvert, Ris Wilkinson, and Tom Jarvis. Huge thanks to my sister, Jane, who went out of her way to support me during the writing process of this book and to whom this book is dedicated. Thanks and love to my children, Ben and Sophie, for always giving me the space and time to write. Finally to both my parents, who never caused me to feel there were any limits as to what could be achieved in this life.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2014 Alexandra Grimshaw

  Ella Carey is the international bestselling author of The House by the Lake, From a Paris Balcony, and Paris Time Capsule. A Francophile who has long been fascinated by secret histories set in Europe’s entrancing past, Ella has degrees in music, nineteenth-century women’s fiction, and modern European history. She lives in Australia with her two children and two Italian greyhounds.